April 2016

April 30, 2016

Last year, I received a diagnosis of breast cancer. I had no idea what I was in for. No one does. No one tells you that it isn’t the diagnosis that gets to you; realizing the big ‘C’ has his grip around your throat is now a fact of life that is out of your hands. What is in your hands---or rather on your needles---is learning how to live with it.

The first several weeks, you’re recuperating from shock, bad dreams and late-night pity parties. Your world becomes very small and self-absorbed; you’re living inside the Fun House at the carnival. There are walls, but they’re moving. There are windows, but you can’t see out. There’s a fluorescent bulb glaring on your new world screaming “pay attention, this is serious”. You can’t help but look back to catch a glimpse of your old life . . . just as it blacks out and goes limp. Your body, perhaps painful and still plotting against you, trumps all. You must find a way through this; you must survive.

You will cope. You will learn skills to cope. I had to learn a skill to cope. I had to practice coping. I picked up a pair of knitting needles. I fondled a ball of wool. There was no end to the coping; I needed to know that I was still valuable, that I could still contribute to this crazy world, that there were people out there who were glad that I was coping . . . even if that meant knitting.

In response to all that coping, I got a sweet demonstration of one of life’s best blessings: giving is better than receiving. I practiced the knit stitch on size ten needles with a ball of chunky weight. My youngest daughter hovered nearby, precious and sacred, observing as my coping produced an ordinary scarf. She soon had it around her neck.

I tussled through a knit two, purl two pattern with a hank of fisherman’s wool, the tasty oatmeal color pleasing my senses. My oldest daughter came home for a visit from college, claiming the patterned scarf and I understood, for the first time, what it must have felt for her to think that I might be at home, lifeless and meek letting ‘C’s grip press the final ebb and flow of life from my body.

I worked my first cable stitch with a medium weight colorway of dark blues, rich oranges and bright reds. It made me think of the forest floor on an autumn afternoon; that familiar place I’d run off to after school too long ago. It felt good having an excuse to let my thoughts reverse time for a while each day. I had chosen a vivid yellow cable needle and relished each moment of slipping the next three stitches, passing the needle to the back, knitting the next three stitches from my needles and at last knitting the gorgeous colorway off of the cable needle. It sounds tedious now; I’ve discovered that most knitters hate using a cable needle, too time consuming. But handling the daybreak-bright cable needle in the middle of every row was the articulation of symmetry that my soul craved. That scarf was the perfect Christmas gift for my sister.

Through the strains and turmoil of doctor visits and blood tests, I needed something more. I found just the right pattern: an entrelac stole made from the most lavish yarn I had yet to invest in. I decided to pour my being into this project, purchasing not only the luxurious wool but new needles that I had spent costly time lusting after. The splurge freshened my spirit. I had learned the knit stitch, the purl stitch and the cable stitch, I was ready. I signed up for the class. I was the only student.

“You want to make the entrelac stole, huh? How long you been knitting,”

“A few months,” I wonder now if I should have lied---“ a few years” may have softened her heart.

“You ever knitted entrelac before?”

“No.”

“You’ve got your own book with the pattern, don’t you?”

I pulled out the book, opening it to the right page.

The women, whose skin was the color of Christmas peanut brittle, began slapping papers around and tossing hanks of yarn into bins, “I’m the last one here. It’s six o’clock, time to close the shop. Start casting on, I’ll be right with you.”

As I began to cast on, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was having a rotten day or maybe, like me, it had been an especially tough year.

When she came back to the table, she brought her finished entrelac stole and whooshed it out across the table, the tilted squares bending perfectly into each other. My breath tripped over my awe.

“That’s beautiful,” I said, tentatively outlining the edges of a few of the diamond shapes with my finger.

“I made it for me. It’s all mine.” That matter settled, she rubbed an open palm over the surface of her stole. “ Who you making yours for?”

I shrugged, looking up at her as she pulled it around herself in an audacious display of visceral confidence.

“It’s too much work for a daughter-in-law. Make it for yourself or . . . maybe your own daughter. But no one else.”

That’s when it hit me. So far I had given away almost everything I had made. Of course I could make something for myself. Something elegant and superb. That stole was her piece of splendor in this world, a glaring suspension of cellophane wrapping her intentions in crystal-clear passion. And it was ok. All I had wanted was a way to cope. All I had needed was to learn to knit, ascertaining comfort from each stitch and every project. But maybe, real coping has less to do with the motions and more to do with the motivation.

April 23, 2016

This piece was writen several years ago. It is an attempt to honor and imitate the late writer David Foster Wallace.

Wallace was an amazing talent whose work continues to speak with vivid freshness to all who dare to bite off chunks and slurp down the flesh and blood of life exactly as Wallace experienced it.

THE DISTURBED PERSON

By Julie Webb

The disturbed person was in a ridiculously rigid amount of emotional turmoil. The pain was so paramount within her it was unexplainable and the impossibility of sharing the depth of it contributed exponentially to the horror of experiencing it.

Although those around her disagreed, withdrawing was her only hope of sanity. Because it was within where she discovered that being able to express even a tiny portion of this pain – the stench of it, the rattling and the filth, its deformed posture – could perhaps lessen the distressing pressure of it upon her soul. Thus, the disturbed person opted to record the pain, locking the feelings as best she could onto the page with words.

The disturbed person began, not at the beginning with a childhood that floated through her life unrecognized, nor with the distracting and mistake-burdened life she had lived thus far, but rather with today – the awkward weight of others in her life, more specifically, the mix of persons her counselor named as her Support System, which consisted of those closest to the disturbed person who are undisturbed themselves: family, a psychiatrist, the counselor himself. They are undamaged people who regard the disturbed person as stoutly afflicted and broken, often taking in the disturbed person through a long gaze of sadness and pity. Regardless they were well-chosen, an honorable group. They were available to help the disturbed person gain perspective and find her footing during the slippery moments. The disturbed person was always careful to apologize to the group for dragging them down, for the despair that swung in their heads after talking with her, for the inward self-pitying and boringness of herself that she shared. The group often functioned in unison, “How are you?” and always responded warmly when the disturbed person’s reaction was less profound, less intense, when it could be experienced by the group as a passing surface tension, controlled and distant. But on those rare occasions when the disturbed person pulled back the curtain of her soul revealing the true expanse of her depression along with the intensity of vexations that haunted her, the group, being human and fragile themselves, wore a collective expression of repulsiveness, frequently retreating quickly to their vibrant, long-distance lives for refuge.

The disturbed person learned to be very careful about the dealing, the sharing, the distribution of her internal, disturbed self. Although she believed with all her heart that any of the persons in the group could themselves become victims of this disturbance given the right recipe of life and mix of mind, not once did she wish the pain upon them just so that they could enter into a greater understanding of it, and thus become comrades with her, falling into step among the remote areas of disturbance where she resided.

The feelings of shame and inadequacy the disturbed person felt when talking with the group about her burdens, her clumsy attempts at forward steps, or the swelling emotional agony that bloated her insides, often left her exhausted. The disturbed person found it difficult to communicate with anyone, even her counselor, about how devastating it was to have her fingers clinging to the pant cuffs of the group, how horribly isolating it was for her to sense helplessness within the group’s long silences, to feel the anguish within their encouraging clichés, or to see within their wincing reactions that she was a joyless burden.

The disturbed person herself often recoiled upon contemplating the amount of detailed, emotional pandemonium she had revealed to her counselor and her doctor. Although she was always trying to explain how hopelessly insecure, how devastatingly pathetic she knew herself to be, it was never truly recognized by either of them. This caused increasing anxiety within the disturbed person that carried over from session to session. The disturbed person often felt urgent about righting the wrongs within herself, as if time was running out and the clock would stop and she would be left with a legacy so despicable -- tainted with faceless monsters and sudden despair and the drumming of clutter inside her head, irreversible damage, permanent injuries.

Although the disturbed person couldn’t imagine a day when not needing her counselor could be a reality, she would often implore him to halt the sessions, to stop the constant revelations of ugly truths that constructed her inner world. She knew deep inside that the downward spiral of her being ensured the conclusion of her life, and knew there was no point in prolonging it. Many months ago, this level of deprivation had required that the disturbed person cross the threshold into the world of antidepressants. She swallowed the pink and white pills daily knowing that they would leave her suitable for nothing more than curious observation, demoting her to some mental, misshapen oddity that would have no choice but to fall into the bowels of existence, remote and alone.

On the day when her will was at its weakest and her spine grieved at its lowest point, she became frozen and discouraged. While facing the reality of deformity and mutilation, of becoming a freak with no idea of who she was anymore, the disturbed person figured that the only way to endure the guilt and hopelessness of the position she now found herself in was to go deeper within herself. She had grown weary of her shattered emotions -- traumatized, wicked and embarrassing -- infected with transparent reflection. And although she had always feared abandonment – a feeling she loathed – she resigned herself to the fact that life had finally succeeded in executing her spirit leaving her relinquished and unable to respond.

The disturbed person obliged to the group and indebted to the counselor and the doctor, had no choice but to continue turning inward day after day, secretly feeling the contempt, the judgment, the repulsion that surrounded her life – all of this contributing to the excruciating pain of being disturbed. Having been rendered voiceless by life itself, she could only dream of asking the group sincerely, honestly, desperately what was wrong with her. She didn’t want assessment or reassurance, but rather a no-holds explanation to the soundless hell she existed in. But she knew they didn’t have answers. They themselves being undisturbed, couldn’t possibly explain how far-reaching the crashing pain, the mass of dripping wounds or the termination of hope could feel. The disturbed person, therefore, urging herself to do what she could to ease the loneliness, tucked her true self inside herself, closed the doors and windows of her soul and waited, knowing that only in the grave she could become undisturbed.

April 15, 2016

Huddled and still on a stripped mattress, tucked into the curves of my mother's body, I felt lost in the Cambodian countryside.

She would pull me closer and begin humming in a lazy way. With her song strolling through my mind, my heart could feel the familiar swell of the bongs and the clicking of the cymbals. With my eyes closed, I could see the flow, the color of time and the scent of sweet rhythm as it pushed and pulled my mother from one movement to the next. Even in my thoughts, she was the most beautiful dancer I had ever seen.

It was the civil war that changed things for us. I remember the week before my twelfth birthday -- April 1975 -- when the Khmer Rouge took over, closing the university and forcing all of Phnom Penh's residents out of the city.

I heard my father talking in the dark that the Khmer Rouge promised not to murder any former government officials. But my mother was not so trusting and wasn't quiet about it. Besides, she argued, every palace dancer is leaving. She was convinced that her association with royal traditions would get all of us executed.

Some of the dancers and musicians went as far as crossing into Thai, but our family found underground refuge in the northeast Cambodian countryside near my father’s cousin. I felt pinched between the greenish-blue forests that grew under and around us and the abandoned outbuilding we hid inside day after day. In the evenings, with the sun almost out of sight, my mother would coax me out of hiding into the center of the room. Her throat would swell with song.

Lifting my arm in a gentle sway above my head and arcing my body to one side, she would whisper in my ear. “The wishes and prayers of the king and his country are inside this dance. Feel it here, my little one.”

As she patted my chest, I could feel the pride of each bend and the authority of each bow as it affirmed the connection between earth and heaven, between mother and daughter, between past and present.

“This dance must never be lost, Jorani. It belongs to all of Cambodia. It is not ours alone."

April 09, 2016

He is tall and whiskered, with the sort of masculinity that has cutting edges and sharp lines. He opens doors, reaching in front of you with a smile, happy to do it again and again. His arms are solid and hard, but feel like comfort around you. And when you cry, he is awkward and strange but doesn’t turn away. And it is then that his arms do what his words cannot: reinforce the lack of distance between you.

When you’re teetering on reality and feeling like someone who stands outside a drug store all day smoking cigarettes, he’s still there when you come home. And you look at him with question marks dripping from your eyes and you want to ask, you want to know why he’s still here. But you don’t ask. You swallow the fear of not knowing if he’ll stay and you concentrate on the scent of his nearness and the cadence in his voice.

And when you see him across the room, his head nodding in time with his friends and his capable frame shifting his stance from foot to foot, you smile at his laughter and you wonder if he thinks of you the way you think of him, with warmth and desire, with thoughts that make his mind race and his heart quicken. And you consider for a moment the weight of the pain should you ever discover that he doesn’t. And as the stabbing sensation loosens your senses, you step backward. You retreat even though you’re screaming inside yourself: don’t withdraw. Then he looks over at you, marking you with a solid gaze as if you belong to him, as if there could be no other in the world for him but you. It stops the retreat. But not the stabbing.

At those times when he takes you away for the weekend, you go willingly. You visit restaurants with dead fish on the walls, you drink beer and talk about how expensive everything is here. Somewhere between the haze of noise and the buzz of the alcohol, you know you should tell him you can’t do this anymore. But instead you nod and drink another beer while he tells you of his global excursions and his finished girlfriends.

And when you leave the bar, all of that stays stuck between you but you’re not sure why. Later that night in bed he loves you and each touch makes you feel like a stranger in a foreign land as excitement mixes with all that is still unknown in him. And you try desperately to figure it out, this pull of distress that is weighing on you. And when he turns over on his side and tucks his arm beneath his head, you say, “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Why not?” He asks, slanting his brows to attention.

And in a split second you decide that he should never know that there are days when you’re riding the train and you’re straining to remember the last time he said he loved you, but you can’t recall and so another fear deposits itself into the soles of your feet. And before the train stops you’ve realized instead that when he talks of politics, you think of romance. And when he watches football, you think of marriage. And when he cooks dinner, you think of leaving.

Instead you say, “I’ll have my things out by the end of the month.”

And after your belongings are packed, you forget to mention that the movers are scheduled for that morning. And he comes home for lunch and when he sees the truck he asks you if you’re sure you want to do this. You look up at him, plunging into the warmth of his dark eyes once more and you tell him again that you can’t do this. Do what? He questions. I need to feel safe. I need to feel loved. You struggle with the invisible truths that sit between you. But again, leave them tucked away.

He shakes his head as he wraps his hand behind his neck and rubs it back and forth. It sounds like a dog scratching and you wonder if he’s ever really loved you. You think back to the beginning of you and him. Your mind wanders in and out, following the weave of moments that created a false sense of we. The time he looked away first, then pulled you tight against his chest. The day he forgot your middle name, so he made up a new one. The little things that didn’t mean much to him then or now.

And as his head stops shaking and his scratching hand returns to his side, you step closer and say I’m sorry, because you can see the pain pulling at the corners of his mouth. And you question for a split second if you’re doing the right thing but you know inside there’s no going back. So you look up at him, tall and whiskered, and you pull every detail of him into your mind one last time daring not to breathe in the chemistry of him as the wrong type of quiet settles between you. And when suddenly his form breaks, you see that your closeness is nothing but a slapping farewell. He steps away, retreating out the door. And you leave with the moving truck.